With a sound card purchase long forgotten, I got a free mic; it was one of those electret elements on a long skinny plastic stick with a sort-of adjustable plastic base. I never used it much because it seemed that I had to "eat it" in order to be heard; pretty soon, I threw it in the junkbox.
Today, I got to thinking about the JFET preamp I have been working on, and decided to try it with a mic. Being the tightwad that I am, I dug out the old mic, took the electret element out of it, rewired it with a 10k power resistor and a .1μF DC blocking cap, and hooked it to my preamp.
Well, the performance is exactly the same. I still have to get right up against the element to produce any output, and then it seems that the output is excessive.
Because I don't know anything about electret mic's, I am wondering if this element is just bad or is that characteristic of the electret?
Thanks.
Today, I got to thinking about the JFET preamp I have been working on, and decided to try it with a mic. Being the tightwad that I am, I dug out the old mic, took the electret element out of it, rewired it with a 10k power resistor and a .1μF DC blocking cap, and hooked it to my preamp.
Well, the performance is exactly the same. I still have to get right up against the element to produce any output, and then it seems that the output is excessive.
Because I don't know anything about electret mic's, I am wondering if this element is just bad or is that characteristic of the electret?
Thanks.